My faith in the publishing industry has been restored:
NEW YORK (AP) — A teen novel at the heart of a plagiarism dispute has been pulled from stores. Author Kaavya Viswanathan, a Harvard University sophomore, had acknowledged that several passages in How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life were borrowed from the works of another writer.Publisher Little, Brown and Company, which had signed the author to a reported six-figure deal, said in a statement Thursday that it had notified retail and wholesale outlets to stop selling copies of the book, and to return unsold copies to the publisher.
Visnawanathan has apologized repeatedly for lifting material from Megan McCafferty, whose books include Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings, saying she had read McCafferty’s books voraciously in high school and unintentionally mimicked them.
McCafferty’s publisher, the Crown Publishing Group, labeled Viswanathan’s actions “literary identity theft” and had urged Little, Brown, which initially said her novel would remain on sale, to pull the book.